How not to promote a video game sale

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You don't need a degree in marketing to know promotional material that could offend and alienate potential customers is obviously a bad call. But it's a fact Indie Gala -- an online store selling Steam keys for indie titles -- seems woefully unaware of. In an effort to promote its winter sale, specifically a discount on tactical first-person shooter Insurgency, the store bundled an insensitive and years-old Steam recommendation with an equally crass meme to create the advert you see above. The tweet has since disappeared, likely due to the devs of Insurgency publicly deploring the promotion, not to mention a chorus of other Twitter users clearly offended by it. The ad remains live on Indie Gala's Facebook page, however.

@IndieGala Remove this tweet. We do NOT accept you promoting our game in this offensive manner.

Video games in general, whether we're talking specific titles or the industry as a whole, struggle with diversity as it is. Given that issues of stereotyping and sexism come up all too often, you'd think an online game store would know better than to come up with such an obviously insensitive promotion.

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